


A Sudden Storm

by divingforstones



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Angst, Conflict, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 02:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1249651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divingforstones/pseuds/divingforstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Robbie has felt helpless before in the face of James’s intransigence, when he seems hell-bent on a particular, self-defeating course of action. He really does not welcome this reminder.”</p><p>James loses perspective and Robbie loses his temper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Exhaustion

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to wendymr for beta’ing this so thoroughly and well. And also for the britpicking which I somehow still manage to need despite being on the Oxford side of the Atlantic ;)

 

Robbie pauses on his way into his office. Oddly, James hasn’t heard his approach. He’s quite still, peering at his computer screen. So Robbie takes a moment to assess him. He doesn’t like what he’s seeing. It’s James’s eyes. They look painfully bloodshot – God, it’s making Robbie blink hard just looking at him. Nicely set off by the dark smudges under them, too. Or do they just look more marked because James is looking pale, even for James? But it’s not just that—or even the stiffness of his posture. The office itself has that indefinable lived-in look that it gets during the height of a gruelling case.

Except James isn’t on a case right now.  Robbie knows. Robbie’s already checked. He's suddenly very grateful for the urge that had made him come in for a couple of hours before the weekend, to make a start on whatever has piled up in his absence. He’s not really due in until Monday.

James’s shirt is a bit rumpled, which means dishevelled by James’s standards. There is an excessive amount of coffee cups on his desk for this stage of the day, but amongst all the files, and the general detritus, there’s nothing food-related. Oh, this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, good—

“Sir.” James breaks into a welcoming grin. It doesn’t make it anywhere near those sore eyes. He has to give the lad points for trying, though. He’s even injected the right amount of animation into his voice. Robbie is not fooled for a moment.

“You all right, sergeant?”

“Should be asking you that, sir,” James says promptly. “I mean, how was your break?” He leans back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. The picture of relaxation. Especially for a man who knows just how much body language can convey. _Still not fooled, lad_.

“What’s happened?”

“Here? Sod all, really, as you’d put it yourself.  You didn’t miss much. Cold case reviews with Grainger for the most part. Re-categorising the paper files in the new computerised format.”

“James.” Robbie waits.

“So you had a good week, sir?”

All right, no information forthcoming here. Just as well Robbie’s got his own sources.

****

“Good holiday, Robbie?”

Laura looks more genuinely pleased to see him. Might have a bit to do with the branded cardboard coffee cup in his hand, though. Robbie finds he can’t quite summon up an answering grin. He’s aware he’s frowning at her, but he doesn’t seem able to clear his expression.

Laura grimaces back at him. “You’ve been upstairs already,” she confirms. “Seriously, is James okay?”

“No. But he’s putting up a damn good imitation of a man who is. Putting a whole lot of effort and every bit of his remaining energies into that, in fact.”

Robbie puts down the coffee cup and nudges it over a bit closer to her. He leans in a bit closer himself.  She’s his best source of knowledge about the goings on in this station. So if someone is involved in overworking James—“Laura. Who’s been doing what to my sergeant?”

****

When he gets back to his office, not a great deal the wiser, he finds Detective Inspector Grainger propping up the wall. He straightens and nods at Robbie’s approach. James, Robbie notes immediately, is looking bothered.

“Just too many errors on this last lot,” Grainger continues.  “They’ll pretty much all need redoing. You’re struggling with the categories, aren’t you, Hathaway? I’m sure you’ll pick it up.”

 _What the hell?_ Robbie advances into the office.  James throws him a look that says, clearer than any words could, just how very much he wants Robbie to leave right now.  Robbie doesn’t care in the slightest.

“Something the matter, Grainger? “He doesn’t try that hard to keep his voice neutral.

Grainger addresses himself to James. “Bit behind on your end of the paperwork, aren't you, sergeant?” he says. Not unkindly. "Well, you'll get there."

Robbie looks over at James and his immediate retort to Grainger dies away on his lips. The lad looks—Christ, he looks shamed and embarrassed.

“No problem, Grainger,” he says overheartily, instead. “Knowing James, he’ll have it to you shortly.”

As Grainger takes the hint and moves out the door, Robbie clocks the expression on James’s face once more. And this time, James just looks desperate.

****

“No.” James rubs his forehead hard. “I just can’t seem to get my head around them.”

Robbie pulls his own chair closer still, and leans around him to assess what’s on his computer screen. Has someone been giving James massive amounts of complicated cold cases to put in impossible categories? Is that it? Some sort of oh-so-hilarious challenge for the legendarily bright Sergeant Hathaway?

What he sees on the screen gives him pause. “But this is standard stuff,” he says in surprise.

“I know.”

“Any of the DCs could—I’d’ve thought you could do this in your sleep,” Robbie carries on, labouring the point stupidly and unnecessarily, and immediately regretting his words.  The embarrassment and frustration written all over his sergeant’s face only increase.

“I can’t seem to think straight.” He sounds bewildered and Robbie instinctively leaps in to soothe before engaging his brain.

“Ah well, you’ve got to expect that when you’ve not been sleeping for a while.”

“How do _you_ know I’ve not been sleeping?”

They eye each other. Both have overplayed their hand. The difference is, Robbie reflects, James is the one who’s just revealed a whole lot more than he was ever planning to.

“Aye,” he says softly. “You look done in, lad. Not like you’ve just had the one late night either. You’ve not been all right at all, the whole of this last week, have you?”

James’s eyes widen and he says nothing. If Robbie didn’t know better, he’d think that James looks almost a bit tearful at his words.

First things first. “Come on,” he says picking up his jacket, “come and let’s get some food into you.”

“No, sir.” It’s low but toneless. James is recovering himself and has ricocheted straight to his most resistant setting.

Robbie tries his best to ignore it. Sleep-deprivation, he reminds himself. There’s a reason it’s used as a form of torture. He’d gained an all-too-real appreciation of that with his own battles with insomnia, after he’d lost Val. And,for some unknown reason, James has seen fit to throw overwork into the equation. Robbie should’ve known better than to go on the warpath. No-one has been pressurising James to get him into this state.

When it comes to tormenting James Hathaway, he knows full well that there’s no-one who can hold a candle to James Hathaway. Robbie has felt helpless before in the face of James’s intransigence, when he seems hell-bent on a particular, self-defeating course of action. He really does not welcome this reminder.

The urge to actually shake some sense into him, to make him just stop, and step away from this to get his head back together—that urge is not a helpful one.

“It’ll all make a lot more sense after you’ve had a break from it—” Something more pertinent occurs to him. “—how long have you been here already this morning?”

“Sir?”

“How. Long.”  Robbie says inexorably. “And you can give your answer in hours and minutes, sergeant, not evasions and Shakespearean sonnets.”

“Sir.”

It’s as close to a flat out refusal to answer as James will risk at this moment, and it’s simultaneously all the answer that Robbie needs. James drops his eyes back to the spreadsheet on his computer screen. Robbie just looks at the top of his head, hard enough, and long enough, that he seems to feel compelled to attempt some sort of justification.

“…wasn’t sleeping anyway so might as well be here...”

 “Okay. That’s enough, sergeant. Lunch. Now.”

“No. Thank you. Sir.”

“Sergeant.” Robbie casts around for the right form of words that James can’t refute. “With me.” He sends the words over his shoulder as he moves through the doorway.

But there is no answering reluctant scrape of the wheels of James’s chair on the floor, as he pushes back from his desk, and no truculent-sounding footsteps falling in behind Robbie. Instead there is the sound of James’s voice, low and formal, from where he still sits at his desk.

“With respect, sir, this is not a case.”

It’ll be a bloody murder case if the lad resists much longer. Does that count? Robbie steps back into the office and fixes his most disbelieving stare on him. James stares right back.

“You have your laptop with you, sergeant,” he asks eventually, keeping his voice as level as possible. It’s not really a question and they both know that.

“Yes, sir,” James says wearily.

“Then transfer those _bloody_ spreadsheets, get the rest of your stuff and _come with me now.”_

“I don’t –”

“It’s either that or I advise Innocent that you’re not fit to work.”

“You –”

“Try me.”

It must be evident, even to James in his current state, just how much Robbie means it, because he prises open his laptop and starts the process.

In complete silence, but frankly that’s as much as Robbie can cope with at the moment too.

****

In the car the silence gradually simmers up from tense to crushing. _Well. That was well-handled,_ Robbie congratulates himself. _Picture of tact and gentle persuasion you were there, Robbie Lewis._ He supresses a sigh. He’s further embarrassed the lad, using threats and pulling rank to get his way. Driven him into an even worse state than he was in when Robbie arrived. He can see James has gone into full shutdown mode. He’s even shut his eyes, and he’s sure as hell not asleep. God, Robbie hates this.

“Look—James,” he tries softly.

No response. Robbie sighs and signals to turn into a nearby car park. James opens his eyes and frowns at his surroundings. Probably wondering why the hell they’re stopping here. Robbie pulls up and applies the brake. He eyes his sergeant.

“Go on, then,” he says. James turns the frown in his direction but avoids meeting Robbie’s eyes. “Five minutes,” says Robbie. James directs a curt nod at him, which is something, at least, Robbie supposes, and gets out, already feeling for his lighter. Robbie could do with five minutes himself. He watches James stride away from the car, lean against the wall, and, once the cigarette is between his lips, crumple up the packet and jam it down hard into his pocket. Ah. Well, that’s easy enough solved.

Glad of an excuse to do something, Robbie gets out and heads towards the newsagent’s down the street. Even at this distance he can feel a pair of eyes fiercely boring into his back as he waits for a gap in the traffic. If looks could kill…

When he gets back, James is back in the passenger seat, which Robbie would take as a conciliatory gesture except that it’s so cold out, and the lad is so dead on his feet, that it’s probably any port in a storm indeed. But speaking of conciliatory gestures—

A packet of cigarettes lands in James’s lap.

****

When they reach James’s flat, he doesn’t miss the look that passes over his sergeant’s face. He knew it. When you spend too many sleepless nights pacing the rooms of one place, it can start to feel very confined. You dread finding yourself back in there at the end of the day. No wonder his stupid sod had thought that the office was the better option.

“Get your stuff,” he says briefly. “You’re coming back to mine for tonight.”

“Sir?” Ah, he’s found his tongue again.

“You heard.”

“No, sir. Thank you, all the same. If I’m not _permitted_ to work in the office, I’ll be just fine working here.”

“Give over, lad,” Robbie says and he can hear the slight hint of desperation in his own voice. He knows what his next step will be if James won’t give in and he really doesn’t want to have to go through with it. James must have heard the slight plea in his tone too, though, because his demeanour softens just perceptibly.

“See you Monday morning, sir.” He gets out of the car and slams the door only a fraction harder than usual. He makes for the boot and Robbie, inwardly cringing, hits the button that locks all the doors.

There’s an impatient rattle at the back of the car but James, understandably waiting for Robbie to correct his mistake, doesn’t appear for a moment.  When he does, it’s at Robbie’s window. Robbie slowly depresses the button that lowers the window. There are absolutely no redeeming features to be found in this situation. At all. But he can’t leave James to a whole weekend of doing this to himself. He just can’t.

“Sir—my laptop.”

“Aye.”  Robbie stares straight ahead, out of the front windscreen. “It’s in the boot, James.”

“Well, open it then.”  James sounds bewildered. Robbie can’t look at him.

“No. I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“Get your stuff for the night and get back in the car. I won’t be opening the boot.”        

“What the _fuck?_ ”

“Sorry, lad. I am, really. Just—come on.”

There is a long silence, and Robbie affects an all-absorbing interest in the nearest parked car.

“I can just go back to the office, sir, and work there, you know,” comes a voice very close to Robbie’s ear. Very measured, very calm, very quiet.  James is absolutely raging.

“Aye, so you could,” says Robbie slowly. "But—the files you need to input are in the boot too.”

****

When the door to James’s flat slams, a moment later, it is with considerably more force than usual. Robbie runs a hand down his face. Truth to tell, he is a little shaken himself. He may not have let himself look at his sergeant, but he knows all too well how he’d have looked when he realised what was being done to him. He’s not honestly certain that James is going to come back to the car any time soon, but he will eventually.

Because they both know that Robbie could just take the sodding work home and do it himself. Just as they both know that, after all this, there’s no way in hell that James is going to let him anywhere near it.  



	2. Reaction

 

If the atmosphere had been bad on the way to James’s flat, that now seems like a distant pleasant memory compared to the journey over to Robbie’s.

When James had returned—somewhat sooner that Robbie had anticipated—and flung his bag on the back seat and then himself with fairly equal force into the front, Robbie had wasted no time in getting going. But now they are stuck in the traffic that plagues certain parts of the route when the schools of Oxford let out for the day.

Robbie wishes to God he could just put on the siren. They are going nowhere fast at the moment. The car has come to a halt, and everything about James says he’s poised for flight. The rapid tapping of his foot on the carpeted floor sounds so hard to Robbie’s strained nerves that he craves music to drown it out. But he doesn’t dare turn it on.

The only thing keeping James with him right at this moment is the very obvious fact that Robbie is finding this almost as difficult as he is.

He reaches forward and turns up the heating instead. It hasn’t escaped his notice that James—daft bugger—has left his coat inside his flat and the lad is giving the odd shudder with the cold. Tiredness will do that to you too.

James gives a long sigh at the gesture. He sounds utterly defeated. Which is not what Robbie wanted at all. He feels another stab of guilt and, before he can think the better of it, he reaches out a hand and rests it on James’s thigh, stilling the tapping foot. It’s more effective than he would’ve thought. James goes instantly still.

“Sir—”

“Aye?”

Nothing else. Robbie looks across. James is visibly fighting with himself. He looks completely wretched. Robbie removes his hand and brings it up to give a consoling pat on the shoulder. Instantly, he sees that that was somehow the wrong move because the shutters slam back down again, in full force. Before he has time to start working _that_ one out, James gives a stiff nod to the road ahead. Traffic is moving again.

****

Robbie, busying himself in the kitchen, casts a dubious glance at his sergeant. James is on the sofa, but hunched over his laptop and surrounded by files. He is either using the work very successfully to act as if Robbie is not even there, or he is already so entrenched in the task again that he’s hardly aware of where he is.

Robbie’s not sure which is worse.

When he had pulled up outside, he’d had half a mind to continue withholding the laptop until James ate something but he didn’t have the heart to put the lad through another scene in the street. James had seized the laptop, and the box of files, leaving Robbie to take the unwanted overnight bag.

Of course, the impact of James striding off ahead of him had been somewhat spoilt when he'd had to wait for Robbie to catch up and unlock the door, but Robbie had made damn sure he didn’t let one iota of his amusement at that reach his face.

Now he is regretting the lack of provisions in his kitchen. James needs something hot to eat and toasted cheese sandwiches are going to have to do. That and coffee. He sincerely doubts that his sergeant is in need of any more caffeine, but he can well imagine how the suggestion that he should lay off it would go down, right about now.

“Not going to up to be much,” he apologises in advance. “Only picked up the essentials on the way back last night.” For all the response he gets, he may as well not have bothered.

When he lays the mug and plate down on the coffee table, within reach of James, he still can’t figure out if his sergeant is intentionally blanking him or too stressed by the boxes onscreen to pick up on Robbie’s proximity.

He is used to James alerting to his presence and responding in subtle ways to shifts in the distance between them. He feels absurdly slighted.

“Coffee,” he prompts.

James starts and picks up the mug. His eyes flitter back to the screen but, when he takes a sip, his expression suddenly changes. “This is the good stuff,” he says in surprise.

“Well, the as-good-as-instant-gets stuff as you generally insist on calling it.”

“But that’s finished. I finished it all the last time we stayed up working on a case. Just before you left. And there was still lots left of the one that you insist is just as good. I know there was. ”

God, but James picks the weirdest bloody things to fixate on sometimes. Still, if it’s important enough to him to pull him out of his current state— “Yeah. So I must’ve bought some more of your one last night, mustn’t I?” asks Robbie matter-of-factly.

“You said you picked up the essentials.”

Ah, so he was listening. Robbie is lost with the road this conversation is taking. Still, at least there is a conversation. Of sorts.

James’s eyes travel from the mug in his hand to the plate in front of him. “Think of it as a square panini,” Robbie says hurriedly.

The first beginnings of a genuine smile start to travel up James’s face. Robbie doesn’t know if it’s the strangely-significant coffee or his weak joke, but he seizes his opportunity and reaches for the laptop. James, who was just lifting the mug to his lips again, jerks his hand down as he grabs for the laptop too, and spills the hot coffee right down his chest.

****

“Christ! Will you get that _off_ you!” Robbie, who has gone straight to the kitchen and doused the nearest cloth—a teatowel —thoroughly under the cold tap, comes back to find that, far from ripping off his shirt, James appears to have gone straight for the laptop, which Robbie had dropped on the nearest armchair, and is now standing holding it and punching hard at one of the keys.

“It doesn’t save!” James shouts.

“What?”

“Automatically. It doesn’t save automatically unless you make it!”

“I wasn’t going to shut it down—or take it off you again. I just—why are we _discussing_ this—”

Robbie wrenches the damn thing out of James’s hands, none too gently, and sticks it on the coffee table. And because the stupid bugger is still just standing there, still exposing his skin to a shirt that is saturated with hot liquid, he then goes to work on the buttons of James’s shirt.

“There,” he says a moment later. “This’ll be cold,” he warns. He spreads the soaked teatowel across the slightly reddened skin on James’s bare chest and spreads the fingers of both hands out, to hold the cloth in place. He can feel James’s chest through the wet cloth and, thankfully, there’s not too much heat. He had slipped a fair amount of milk into the coffee, after all. Bloody Lucky.

James stands still as anything under his touch and Robbie suddenly becomes very aware that his sergeant is unclothed from the waist up. He’s seen James shirtless before, but never this close up. Never so still. And never while—touching him. He becomes fully aware of how lithe and muscled the lad is. How his chest is rising and falling somewhat unevenly under Robbie’s spread palms.

Robbie is suddenly thankful that, if one of them had to have coffee thrown over them in the tussle, it is James who landed up shirtless in his living room. He is about to chase down this thought, when something catches his eye, and without thinking—James is so still after all—he slides one hand over to hold James’s arm and runs his thumb very gently up and down the scar the bullet must’ve left.

Crevecoeur.

He comes back to himself with a vengeance when he feels James shudder in his hands.

“Sorry! Sorry, lad.” He continues a bit more calmly. “There.” He lowers the cloth completely and eyes James’s chest. Red patch fading already. “That ought to do it. Should be running water really but it seems okay. Looks okay if it feels okay anyway.” He becomes aware that he is rambling and that James is as silent as he is still. He has to look up to read his sergeant’s face when he’s standing quite this close to him.

But James’s face is very carefully arranged and only another shiver betrays the careful formality. That gets Robbie going again.

“Go and put on a dry shirt—here.” He grabs the overnight bag and hands it over, “You must be frozen.”

Although James hadn’t felt cold to the touch, he realises, as James retreats obediently, and still silently, down the hall in the direction of the bathroom. Must be the shock of the near-scald. After all, Robbie feels quite warm himself. Which must be from the shock of nearly scalding his sergeant. He retreats to the kitchen and starts the process of assembling lunch again.

****

“Could I?” James holds out his empty mug.

“’Course.” Robbie is so pleased to have him eating, drinking and away from the computer screen that this time he doesn’t give a second thought to the wisdom of supplying him with yet another shot of caffeine. He’d taken his chance to remove all the files, along with the laptop, into the kitchen area while James was changing and he is heartily relieved that the lad doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to go near them again just yet. The silence is becoming a companionable one at last.

James is even starting to look a bit more human, Robbie is thankful to see. Could be partly the change into casual clothes. But it’s also his posture that’s more relaxed. It’s not the old familiar slouch yet, but at least looking at him is no longer making Robbie’s back twinge in sympathy, which has to be a good thing.

“Should’ve just thrown coffee over him soon as I saw him this morning,” he muses to himself, as he settles back into the rarely used armchair. He’s allowing his sergeant his space.

“What?”

Damn. As James starts to recover himself, he’s also recovered his patented ability to hear things that Robbie is barely aware of saying aloud.

“Seems to have—helped,” he says awkwardly now.

For reply, James shakily puts down the refilled mug and then drops his head in his hands, as abruptly as if he’s been struck.


	3. Resettling

Robbie finds himself on the couch, back in the more accustomed position, close beside James. James is keeping his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and his breath is coming that bit unevenly again. Robbie drops his hand helplessly on the lad’s back.

He applies a bit of pressure with his fingertips, to make sure that James, in the middle of whatever it is he is struggling with, takes in that he is right there.

There doesn’t seem to be anything much to be said so the touch is the best he can think of for now. But he finds himself talking away helplessly, anyway; “Be all right, take a minute now. We’ll sort it out, whatever it is, you just take it easy. Take your time.”

But it seems to take quite a long moment before James raises his head. He shifts the position of his hand slightly as the younger man straightens up a bit, sliding his palm down, to rest against the small of James’s back.

He is highly reluctant to remove the bit of contact. It was a shock, how suddenly this happened. And hard watching him struggling like that and feeling so bloody useless. Pressing his hand against his sergeant’s back is steadying Robbie as well. So he keeps it there and applies pressure as steadily as if James is wounded. And he waits.

“Sorry…” comes the mumble at last. Robbie ignores that.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Just—you were teasing. Which was—good.”

Ah. Robbie can see how the sudden return to the familiar pattern might have triggered distress. He’d felt more relieved than he’d cared to admit to himself, when James had started to smile earlier. Thoroughly relieved at the return of something approaching normality between them. Especially after the unaccustomed week apart. And he’s not the one who’s sorely sleep-deprived. He moves his hand to rest it on James’s arm now. He needs him to take this bit in properly.

“I shouldn’t have—said or done any of that to you, this morning. In the office. Outside your flat. I just couldn’t stand to see you so trapped. Made me angry. That you’re here now—that’s a good thing. But doesn’t mean I’ll be left thinking I handled it well, how I got you here.”

“Trapped?” James is startled now.

“You were busy trapping yourself in a prison of your own making there.”

“It’s not of my making." James is stung. “It’s this bloody new system.”

“It’s got bugger all to do with the system and you know it,” says Robbie bluntly.

“Sir—”

“It’s whatever’s eating at you that’s got you so blindsighted that you can’t sleep for fretting. Only takes a few nights of that in a row to drive out any rational thinking and make your days impossible.”

James is flushed, but volunteers nothing further. He doesn’t ask where Robbie gets his expertise on the effects of sleeplessness. He won’t need Robbie to confirm to him that he’s referring to the rawest time after losing Val.

His silence is all right this time. Robbie can wait. Besides, there’s something else preoccupying him at this moment in time. They are both leaning back by now. James, who is taller, but could slouch for England, has his head somehow lower than Robbie’s and tilted back. They sit, as they always do, close enough to physically feel the presence of the other one. When one of them shifts slightly, a shoulder, an arm or a thigh, the other one becomes more aware of it.

This is exactly how they have sat many times before and somehow nothing like it either.

This time, when James moves, the brush of his arm against Robbie’s feels more like a caress than just a contact.

Robbie frowns, working it out.

He knows deep down that what had really made him lose hold of his temper this morning was that his “Sergeant, with me” had failed to work, for the first time, ever, with James. The lack of that tall presence falling in behind him had suddenly seemed like a keen and inexplicable loss. And he had reacted badly against the shock of that. Very badly.

He gives himself a mental shake and returns to the original problem. Time to turn his best investigative skills on this.

Just a damn shame that the lad already knows every single interrogation technique Robbie’s got. Inside-out. _Construct a timeline._ He suddenly recalls the frantic jabbing at the keyboard earlier. “When did you find out about the program not saving?”

“Sir?”

“That it doesn’t save automatically.”

“They’d have told us that when they ran through the program. First thing Monday morning.”

 _Aye, right. Nice try._ “I’m sure they would have,” Robbie says mildly. “But you found out the hard way, didn’t you? Lost your work.”

James sends him a glance and then visibly gives in. “Wednesday,” he says briefly.

Ah. So bothered enough by Monday morning not to take in the basics in the training session. Something had touched James off over the weekend.

 _So what happened, Sergeant Hathaway, between the hours of 6pm, last Friday, and 9am, Monday, that’s put you into such a state now, eh?_ muses Robbie. But he can’t use the hard approach on James. He never could.

“And that’s why you were in such a foul humour on Thursday morning,” he says instead.

“It—” James stops. “How do you know what sort of mood I was in on Thursday morning?” he enquires suspiciously.

“Have me methods, me,” says Robbie succinctly.

James turns slightly pink. “Dr Hobson,” he confirms. “I may have been a bit short with her, I think.”

“Ah, she’s forgiven you already.” Robbie waves off the apology. Although come to think of it, it’s not meant for him. And God only knows what “may have been a bit short” translates to, for James. Laura wouldn’t enlighten him about that bit either. James very possibly owes her a pint.

James is shifting uncomfortably now just recalling it. Robbie absently brings him back to rest with a touch of his hand.

“She could see you weren’t yourself, lad, that’s the main thing. From how you looked. Said she thought one of her corpses had escaped the morgue.” He suddenly finds the phrasing much funnier than when Laura had first used it this morning. James looks rather wounded, which only increases his amusement.

He sobers up abruptly when he feels James move again beside him, as if in prelude to getting up. His arm seems to come out of its own accord and reach across James’s chest, clamping him back against the couch. He tells himself it’s to stop James putting any sort of distance between them, now he’s finally getting somewhere; but in truth, it was a reflex.

James’s long body has been slowly relaxing beside his, and as his posture has softened further, his warm weight against Robbie’s side has been gradually increasing. Robbie is not about to let him move an inch further away if he can help it. James turns a startled face towards him.

“Just—stay right there, lad. Right there.”

James takes a sharp breath.

“God, am I hurting your chest? Does it still sting?” Robbie hurriedly drops his arm.

He hears James take another, deeper, breath and then; “no” comes very low and close to Robbie’s ear.

And, as if a decision has been made that Robbie was not aware of ever actually facing, he finds himself moving over still further into James’s warmth.

And after the shortest of pauses, James’s weight settles very firmly against the length of Robbie; as James himself relaxes that final bit more into him, to effectively extinguish any remaining small space that could possibly exist between them.

****

“Beer?” Robbie asks, after a little while. Just out of habit, really. He is immensely comfortable sitting here and touched by the trusting way the lad has simply settled himself against Robbie, almost as if he’d been waiting for the chance to do this. _Had he?_

But part of him is still acutely aware that, despite the storm they have weathered, he and James, that has washed them up together on his couch, like this, on this extraordinary Friday evening, he’s still none the wiser about what has put his sergeant into this state, and made everything between them implode and resettle into this new shape.

He still needs to work out what’s been the matter.

James makes that familiar grimace that usually precedes a self-mocking comment. “Disappointingly, sir, it transpires that alcohol doesn’t actually have a clarifying effect on how the spreadsheets look.”

Hmm. Robbie, well used to hearing important truths hidden in ironical tones from James, stores up the implications of that one. And he waits.

****

The next time he hears the tired voice, so close to his ear now, it’s not quite the words he would’ve expected.

“O soft embalmer of the still midnight,  
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,  
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,  
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine…”

What? He’d been secretly hoping James might be getting relaxed enough to sleep a bit, not spout poetry about it. Still, he supposes, it’s nice to have his walking anthology of verse back.

“Which one of the boys in the band is that, then?” he jokes. Lucky guess that, as it turns out. James looks as ridiculously pleased as he always does whenever Robbie exhibits knowledge on one of his sergeant’s many, many pet topics.

He looks at the blessedly familiar grin and suddenly he can just picture Monday morning. James, being James, in the conference room under sufferance, presenting a perfectly polite and pleasant façade of listening to the run-through, while finding it all completely unnecessary and wrestling in his head with his own personal demons. And, if he gave a thought to it at all, perfectly confident in the knowledge that he could work the whole program out himself.

Which, under normal circumstances, with his brain functioning on even half a cylinder, he could’ve too, no bother to him, thinks Robbie staunchly. But by the time he came to actually try it, he was barely functioning, if what Robbie’s seen of him today is any indication.

“Must’ve been a bit of a shock for him to find himself struggling,” he muses to himself.

“It was sir, yes,” says James drily.

He’s got to stop doing that before he inadvertently expresses a thought unfit for his sergeant’s ears. “Well, now you know how us mere mortals feel most days of the week.”

“Thought I was going mad,” James admits, not-quite joking.

“Aye. It muddles you something chronic, the lack of sleep. Didn’t you look it up—sleep and cognition, eh? Jesus, you were in a bad way if you didn’t even think to research it.” Robbie isn’t actually joking at all.

“Didn’t really think about it exactly—the whole thing is just a blur of spreadsheets and staring at the ceiling.”

“And nicotine, caffeine and alcohol,” supplies Robbie. He can see immediately he’s hit the mark.

“I thought a couple of glasses of whiskey might help me sleep.”

“Aye,” says Robbie slowly. “I know the feeling. Knocks you out a bit, doesn’t it? And then you wake up in the wee hours of the morning because it’s mucked up your sleep and you feel worse than before.”

A stiff nod of acquiescence.

“Aye well, lad,” says Robbie ruefully, “all that’s going to do, then, is cost you more in them extra shots in your foamy coffees in the morning.”

There is a slight snort beside him and it’s his reward for resisting the sharp admonishment that first sprang to his lips when he thought of James knocking back whiskey alone in his flat, in an attempt to get some sleep. No sense sending the lad into full defensive manoeuvres. Better to just make damn sure he doesn’t get to the point where he’s that desperate again.

And if he’s going to have any chance of James letting him—help—with things like that long-term, he carefully phrases the issue to himself; if James is going to let Robbie be more involved in his life, learn to lean on him harder, then Robbie needs to proceed with due caution.

Because it suddenly seems ridiculously important, not just for James’s wellbeing, but also for Robbie’s, that James let Robbie be more involved with him.

He is so bemused by this realisation that it takes him a moment to realise that James is speaking again.

“You wouldn’t really have told Innocent that I was unfit for work.” James quirks one side of his lips at him, inviting him to share in the humour of it now. And Robbie is so bloody tempted not to rock the boat, to grin and agree, but if they are, he and James, going to lean on each other more, then—well, then he has to be honest about this stuff.

“No. I would’ve.”

“In the heat of the moment?” James quips. Still finding it funny now. Robbie feels like a right bastard. Not for the first time today.

“No, even with a cooler head, lad, I’d’ve gone to her.”

“But—”

“I wouldn’t let you do that to yourself. What you were doing today. Driving yourself into the ground. It’s not allowed. Not on my watch. I’m not going to stand and watch you do that to yourself. You know I won’t. So—”

Robbie stops, assaulted by a memory of a dim and dusty basement. “And you should understand that more than anyone,” he finishes, a little shakily.

James gives him a wide-eyed nod. Christ, the lad seems to have been ahead of him on understanding a few things here.

****

“Can’t believe you have spies in the station,” comes the tired mumble eventually.

“Sources, sergeant, sources. Have I taught you nothing about proper old fashioned policing? They’re called sources and you have to bribe them. Keep ‘em sweet. ”

James gives a very tired chuckle. “I know how Dr Hobson likes her coffee too,” he murmurs.

Robbie had missed this. He has unquestioningly become used to having a sympathetic presence right beside him. Sometimes, during the week off, something small had amused him and he had caught himself turning his head automatically to share his silent sidelong appreciation of it with his sergeant. He remembers one of the anecdotes he had stored up that James would appreciate properly.

“In Manchester—” he starts. Then he stops. What the hell? James’s whole body has gone rigid beside him. Robbie gazes at him in astonishment.

“ _What_? What is it?”

“I always think— you always—when you go up to Manchester—“ James bites the last word off bitterly and dries up.

 _Manchester_? This is about bloody Manchester? What in God’s name has his choice of holiday destination got to do with James’s inability to sleep?

“Aye, well, our Lyn does happen to live there, you know,” he says. He had expected a withering look or an eye roll, but he gets neither. He wouldn’t have thought it possible but James just looks even more miserable.

“You seemed all right when I left.” Robbie feels his way slowly. James really did. Surely he wouldn’t have missed it if the lad was distressed before he left, he hopes to God he wouldn’t have. That he didn’t fail to read the signals and blithely go off, leaving James in a state already. It’s a horrible thought.

Some of his upset must be showing on his face, because a frown of concern forms on James’s forehead and he, finally, finally offers up the explanation that Robbie has been waiting for all day.

“It was the text you sent when you got there.”

Oh. Robbie casts his mind back. But it doesn’t make any sense. He’d been late getting there and, mindful of James’s parting shot of _let me know you got there,_ and that his sergeant worries a bit, he’d sent a quick text before sitting down with Lyn and her husband to the meal she’d been keeping warm for him.

 _Got here fine. Sitting down to homemade stew. Think I’ll have to stay longer than the week._ It was a ridiculous joke.

“You didn’t think I meant that?”

“Not exactly.” James is flushed. “It just reminded me. That it’s probably not that long until you do move up there. When you do retire.”

What? No. Surely this hasn’t been —“James, I have no plans at all to—”

“I know your daughter wants you to.” James says it very low.

“Aye. But, strangely enough, her mam and I brought her up to learn she can’t always get what she wants.” It’s not the right way to go, the wretched look on the lad’s face isn’t shifting one bit.

“James. _I_ don’t want to move to Manchester. Even when I do retire.”

And it’s that sudden. That easy. This could all have been avoided if Robbie had been that little bit more forthcoming, more open, in clearing things up before. He feels rubbish.

He’d slept well that night, hadn’t really worried about the lack of a text back, due to the lateness of the hour, and meanwhile his throwaway remark had upset James, kept him awake fretting and touched off a bad weekend that had spiralled into an even worse week for him.

Robbie can suddenly vividly picture the quietly growing desperation that had dominated James’s week. A week during which he’d had more than enough opportunity to feel Robbie’s absence as he found himself struggling alone in work and more than enough time to dwell on it during his bouts of sleeplessness.

“You should’ve phoned me,” he blurts out.

“'Phoned you. And said I wasn’t sleeping. Seriously, sir, what could you have done?”

Robbie frowns, giving it his honest consideration. What would he have done? “Well, dragged you out for a pint, and taken it from there, I suppose.”

“Be a bit tricky, sir. By Skype, I mean. Adept though you obviously are at online technology.”

“Oi. No. I’d’ve come back, you daft sod.”

“Come back?”

“Aye, it’s not the other side of the world, you know, Manchester. Think I’d just leave you struggling like that?”

“No.” James shakes his head bemused.

“Well then.”

It seems simple enough to Robbie, but somehow it’s the simple things James often needs to hear spelt out. He gives it a go. “I’d have come back, same as if I actually retired up there, I’d always come back if you were stuck too.”

He sighs. “But, thing is…I really don’t want to go anywhere else but here. Especially—right now. I don’t even much like it when you pick up a case with someone else when I’m not here. No way I’d be leaving you to your own devices knocking around Oxford.”

But that’s not really quite it, either. "And don’t start thinking it’s just that I’d—worry—about you. It’s more than that. The same way that you thinking about me, leaving for good, got you so bothered—well, I’d be as bothered if you were doing the same. So I’m hardly likely to go anywhere meself.”

Sleep-deprived sergeants and all.

He feels exhausted from actually managing to say all that. But he doesn’t have to wait long to realise it was worth it. James’s face has cleared during his speech. It’s like watching the sun coming out. That slight, private smile that he keeps for moments when something has made him genuinely happy, to the core of him, begins to turn up the corners of his lips.

Neither of them say anything else for a bit. They sit. Whether it’s from managing to put some of what he feels into words, or the effect that he saw it have on James, Robbie feels incredibly content.

So it feels all the worse when James yawns, stretches so that he briefly presses harder against Robbie’s side, and then gets up.

In fairness, a decent night’s sleep in his own bed is probably what any doctor would prescribe for James. And he may need time to process the implications of all this.It’s just—Robbie feels almost cold with the sudden loss of proximity.

Then he notices the familiar gesture as James feels for his lighter. Ah. But James has already caught the expression that must’ve passed across Robbie’s face.

“No coat, no car,” he says gently. “I’m hardly a flight risk, sir. Particularly if you will insist— "and there is that slight but definitive quirk of the lips" —on holding my belongings hostage.”

Robbie’s got no reply for that. He sees James’s eyes soften further.

“I really don’t want to go anywhere else but here, either, sir,” he says. “Especially—right now.”

****

When he returns, James drops straight back down into the small space between Robbie and the end of the sofa, without ceremony, as if it is simply where he belongs. Then he yawns and, without a word, drops his head on Robbie’s shoulder. Nestles in.

Everything around Robbie seems to slow down and eventually still.

He works his arm out and wraps it across James’s shoulders. James shifts a little to allow the movement, as if he knows what Robbie’s doing, then gives a deep sigh and resettles his head.

Robbie tightens his arm to fit James all the better against him. Then he works the fingers of his other hand gently through the long, loose fingers of James’s nearest hand and feels a slow but definite clasp in return. After that he just sits quite still and lets his sergeant rest against him in silence.

Eventually the fingers, still twined around his, seem to go limp.

When he feels the weight of the warm head on his shoulder become heavier, he knows for sure. But he sits and listens to the measured, even breathing, deepening, and lengthening out, for a long while more.

And then he voices aloud the conclusion that he’s come to, mainly for his own benefit. He hears his own voice come out a bit hoarse, burnt with all the emotions of the day.

“Aye, that’s it now, lad. That’s it. Happen all you really needed was a shoulder to sleep on, all along.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James quotes from Ode To Sleep by John Keats


End file.
